When you hear about nootropics, often called “smart drugs,” you probably picture something like the scene above from Limitless, where Bradley Cooper’s character becomes brilliant after downing a strange pill. The drugs and supplements currently available don’t pack that strong of a punch, but the concept is basically the same. Many nootropics have promising benefits, like boosting memory, focus, or motivation, and there’s research to support specific uses. But the most effective nootropics, like Modafinil, aren’t intended for use without a prescription to treat a specific condition. In fact, recreational use of nootropics is hotly-debated among doctors and medical researchers. Many have concerns about the possible adverse effects of long-term use, as well as the ethics of using cognitive enhancers to gain an advantage in school, sports, or even everyday work.

Racetams, specifically Piracetam, an ingredient popular in over-the-counter nootropics, are synthetic stimulants designed to improve brain function. Patel notes Piracetam is the granddaddy of all racetams, and the term “nootropic” was originally coined to describe its effects. However, despite its popularity and how long it’s been around and in use, researchers don’t know what its mechanism of action is. Patel explained that the the most prominent hypothesis suggests Piracetam enhances neuronal function by increasing membrane fluidity in the brain, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet. And Patel elaborated that most studies on Piracetam aren’t done with the target market for nootropics in mind, the young professional:
We reached out to several raw material manufacturers and learned that Phosphatidylserine and Huperzine A are in short supply. We also learned that these ingredients can be pricey, incentivizing many companies to cut corners. A company has to have the correct ingredients in the correct proportions in order for a brain health formula to be effective. We learned that not just having the two critical ingredients was important – but, also that having the correct supporting ingredients was essential in order to be effective.
Piracetam is a reliable supplement for improving creativity. It is an entry level racetam due to its lack of severe side effects and relative subtlety. Piracetam’s effects take hold over time through continual use. There is less instant gratification compared to other brain enhancers. Additionally, this nootropic can enhance holistic thinking, verbal memory, and mental energy levels.
The magnesium was neither randomized nor blinded and included mostly as a covariate to avoid confounding (the Noopept coefficient & t-value increase somewhat without the Magtein variable), so an OR of 1.9 is likely too high; in any case, this experiment was too small to reliably detect any effect (~26% power, see bootstrap power simulation in the magnesium section) so we can’t say too much.
Known widely as ‘Brahmi,’ the Bacopa Monnieri or Water Hyssop, is a small herb native to India that finds mention in various Ayurvedic texts for being the best natural cognitive enhancer. It has been used traditionally for memory enhancement, asthma, epilepsy and improving mood and attention of people over 65. It is known to be one of the best brain supplement in the world.
The difference in standard deviations is not, from a theoretical perspective, all that strange a phenomenon: at the very beginning of this page, I covered some basic principles of nootropics and mentioned how many stimulants or supplements follow a inverted U-curve where too much or too little lead to poorer performance (ironically, one of the examples in Kruschke 2012 was a smart drug which did not affect means but increased standard deviations).
One might suggest just going to the gym or doing other activities which may increase endogenous testosterone secretion. This would be unsatisfying to me as it introduces confounds: the exercise may be doing all the work in any observed effect, and certainly can’t be blinded. And blinding is especially important because the 2011 review discusses how some studies report that the famed influence of testosterone on aggression (eg. Wedrifid’s anecdote above) is a placebo effect caused by the folk wisdom that testosterone causes aggression & rage!

Analyzing the results is a little tricky because I was simultaneously running the first magnesium citrate self-experiment, which turned out to cause a quite complex result which looks like a gradually-accumulating overdose negating an initial benefit for net harm, and also toying with LLLT, which turned out to have a strong correlation with benefits. So for the potential small Noopept effect to not be swamped, I need to include those in the analysis. I designed the experiment to try to find the best dose level, so I want to look at an average Noopept effect but also the estimated effect at each dose size in case some are negative (especially in the case of 5-pills/60mg); I included the pilot experiment data as 10mg doses since they were also blind & randomized. Finally, missingness affects analysis: because not every variable is recorded for each date (what was the value of the variable for the blind randomized magnesium citrate before and after I finished that experiment? what value do you assign the Magtein variable before I bought it and after I used it all up?), just running a linear regression may not work exactly as one expects as various days get omitted because part of the data was missing.

Zach was on his way to being a doctor when a personal health crisis changed all of that. He decided that he wanted to create wellness instead of fight illness. He lost over a 100 lbs through functional nutrition and other natural healing protocols. He has since been sharing his knowledge of nutrition and functional medicine for the last 12 years as a health coach and health educator.

…Four subjects correctly stated when they received nicotine, five subjects were unsure, and the remaining two stated incorrectly which treatment they received on each occasion of testing. These numbers are sufficiently close to chance expectation that even the four subjects whose statements corresponded to the treatments received may have been guessing.
A total of 14 studies surveyed reasons for using prescription stimulants nonmedically, all but one study confined to student respondents. The most common reasons were related to cognitive enhancement. Different studies worded the multiple-choice alternatives differently, but all of the following appeared among the top reasons for using the drugs: “concentration” or “attention” (Boyd et al., 2006; DeSantis et al., 2008, 2009; Rabiner et al., 2009; Teter et al., 2003, 2006; Teter, McCabe, Cranford, Boyd, & Guthrie, 2005; White et al., 2006); “help memorize,” “study,” “study habits,” or “academic assignments” (Arria et al., 2008; Barrett et al., 2005; Boyd et al., 2006; DeSantis et al., 2008, 2009; DuPont et al., 2008; Low & Gendaszek, 2002; Rabiner et al., 2009; Teter et al., 2005, 2006; White et al., 2006); “grades” or “intellectual performance” (Low & Gendaszek, 2002; White et al., 2006); “before tests” or “finals week” (Hall et al., 2005); “alertness” (Boyd et al., 2006; Hall et al., 2005; Teter et al., 2003, 2005, 2006); or “performance” (Novak et al., 2007). However, every survey found other motives mentioned as well. The pills were also taken to “stay awake,” “get high,” “be able to drink and party longer without feeling drunk,” “lose weight,” “experiment,” and for “recreational purposes.”
Analyzing the results is a little tricky because I was simultaneously running the first magnesium citrate self-experiment, which turned out to cause a quite complex result which looks like a gradually-accumulating overdose negating an initial benefit for net harm, and also toying with LLLT, which turned out to have a strong correlation with benefits. So for the potential small Noopept effect to not be swamped, I need to include those in the analysis. I designed the experiment to try to find the best dose level, so I want to look at an average Noopept effect but also the estimated effect at each dose size in case some are negative (especially in the case of 5-pills/60mg); I included the pilot experiment data as 10mg doses since they were also blind & randomized. Finally, missingness affects analysis: because not every variable is recorded for each date (what was the value of the variable for the blind randomized magnesium citrate before and after I finished that experiment? what value do you assign the Magtein variable before I bought it and after I used it all up?), just running a linear regression may not work exactly as one expects as various days get omitted because part of the data was missing.

The easiest way to use 2mg was to use half a gum; I tried not chewing it but just holding it in my cheek. The first night I tried, this seemed to work well for motivation; I knocked off a few long-standing to-do items. Subsequently, I began using it for writing, where it has been similarly useful. One difficult night, I wound up using the other half (for a total of 4mg over ~5 hours), and it worked but gave me a fairly mild headache and a faint sensation of nausea; these may have been due to forgetting to eat dinner, but this still indicates 3mg should probably be my personal ceiling until and unless tolerance to lower doses sets in.

There are hundreds of cognitive enhancing pills (so called smart pills) on the market that simply do NOT work! With each of them claiming they are the best, how can you find the brain enhancing supplements that are both safe and effective? Our top brain enhancing pills have been picked by sorting and ranking the top brain enhancing products yourself. Our ratings are based on the following criteria.
Of all the smart drugs in the world, Modafinil is most often touted as the best. It’s a powerful cognitive enhancer, great for boosting alertness, and has very few, mild side effects that most healthy users will never experience. And no, you can’t have any. Sorry. Modafinil is a prescription medication used to treat disorders like narcolepsy, shift work sleep disorder, and for those who suffer from obstructive sleep apnea.
Taurine (Examine.com) was another gamble on my part, based mostly on its inclusion in energy drinks. I didn’t do as much research as I should have: it came as a shock to me when I read in Wikipedia that taurine has been shown to prevent oxidative stress induced by exercise and was an antioxidant - oxidative stress is a key part of how exercise creates health benefits and antioxidants inhibit those benefits.
The Trail Making Test is a paper-and-pencil neuropsychological test with two parts, one of which requires shifting between stimulus categories. Part A simply requires the subject to connect circled numbers in ascending order. Part B requires the subject to connect circled numbers and letters in an interleaved ascending order (1, A, 2, B, 3, C….), a task that places heavier demands on cognitive control. Silber et al. (2006) analyzed the effect of d-AMP on Trails A and B and failed to find an effect.
It’s not clear that there is much of an effect at all. This makes it hard to design a self-experiment - how big an effect on, say, dual n-back should I be expecting? Do I need an arduous long trial or an easy short one? This would principally determine the value of information too; chocolate seems like a net benefit even if it does not affect the mind, but it’s also fairly costly, especially if one likes (as I do) dark chocolate. Given the mixed research, I don’t think cocoa powder is worth investigating further as a nootropic.
Many of these supplements include exotic-sounding ingredients. Ginseng root and an herb called bacopa are two that have shown some promising memory and attention benefits, says Dr. Guillaume Fond, a psychiatrist with France’s Aix-Marseille University Medical School who has studied smart drugs and cognitive enhancement. “However, data are still lacking to definitely confirm their efficacy,” he adds.
According to clinical psychiatrist and Harvard Medical School Professor, Emily Deans, “there's probably nothing dangerous about the occasional course of nootropics...beyond that, it's possible to build up a tolerance if you use them often enough." Her recommendation is to seek pharmaceutical-grade products which she says are more accurate regarding dosage and less likely to be contaminated.

First was a combination of L-theanine and aniracetam, a synthetic compound prescribed in Europe to treat degenerative neurological diseases. I tested it by downing the recommended dosages and then tinkering with a story I had finished a few days earlier, back when caffeine was my only performance-enhancing drug. I zoomed through the document with renewed vigor, striking some sentences wholesale and rearranging others to make them tighter and punchier.

With something like creatine, you’d know if it helps you pump out another rep at the gym on a sustainable basis. With nootropics, you can easily trick yourself into believing they help your mindset. The ideal is to do a trial on yourself. Take identical looking nootropic pills and placebo pills for a couple weeks each, then see what the difference is. With only a third party knowing the difference, of course.

Cost-wise, the gum itself (~$5) is an irrelevant sunk cost and the DNB something I ought to be doing anyway. If the results are negative (which I’ll define as d<0.2), I may well drop nicotine entirely since I have no reason to expect other forms (patches) or higher doses (2mg+) to create new benefits. This would save me an annual expense of ~$40 with a net present value of <820 ($); even if we count the time-value of the 20 minutes for the 5 DNB rounds over 48 days (0.2 \times 48 \times 7.25 = 70), it’s still a clear profit to run a convincing experiment.

The chemical Huperzine-A (Examine.com) is extracted from a moss. It is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor (instead of forcing out more acetylcholine like the -racetams, it prevents acetylcholine from breaking down). My experience report: One for the null hypothesis files - Huperzine-A did nothing for me. Unlike piracetam or fish oil, after a full bottle (Source Naturals, 120 pills at 200μg each), I noticed no side-effects, no mental improvements of any kind, and no changes in DNB scores from straight Huperzine-A.
The use of cognition-enhancing drugs by healthy individuals in the absence of a medical indication spans numerous controversial issues, including the ethics and fairness of their use, concerns over adverse effects, and the diversion of prescription drugs for nonmedical uses, among others.[1][2] Nonetheless, the international sales of cognition-enhancing supplements exceeded US$1 billion in 2015 when global demand for these compounds grew.[3]